


Friend or Foe

by originally



Series: Friendly Fire [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Dwarf Appreciation Week, F/F, POV Sigrun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sigrun finds it hard to make friends among the Inquisition. </p><p>[A timestamp for the Friendly Fire verse]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend or Foe

Sigrun stared morosely into her empty tankard and sighed. Drinking alone again. Thom was off doing… something, with Dorian, and she wasn’t going to think too hard about that. Not until she’d had a few more drinks, anyway. The problem was, without him, she didn’t have anyone to talk to. Everyone else in Skyhold seemed to give her a wide berth, and she couldn’t decide whether it was because she was a Warden, or a duster, or a Legionnaire, or maybe a combination. Wardens didn’t have the best reputation around here after what Alistair had called ‘that Orlesian balls-up’, and Legionnaires always seemed to frighten people, especially other dwarves. She had been getting on quite well with that freckled scout until she’d mentioned her background. She supposed it was the fact that they were dead, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be fun. On the other hand, the young arcanist had enthused so excitedly about taking samples of a ‘real Grey Warden!’ that Sigrun had had to excuse herself in a slight panic.

She slid her signet ring from her finger, enjoying the reassuring weight of it in her palm. As she played with it, letting it skip across her knuckles in that way that had become second nature over the last decade, she thought, with a pang of sorrow, about Varlan, and about Natia, and Velanna, and all the other Wardens who had become her family back in Amaranthine. She might even settle for Oghren’s company right about now, ancestors help her. She hadn’t heard an inappropriate flirtation in months, and she almost missed them.

Laughing softly at her own foolishness, Sigrun slipped the ring back onto her finger. She imagined she could hear Natia’s voice in her ear, warm and familiar and just a little exasperated: _Feeling sorry for yourself, salroka?_

“Another, Warden-Constable?”

That was wasn’t Natia. Sigrun gave herself a shake, chasing away her silly daydream. She fixed Cabot with her friendliest smile, and said, “Just Sigrun is fine. And yes please.”

As Sigrun slid her tankard across the bar, she became aware of a prickling at the back of her neck; she had a finely-honed sense of when she was being watched, instincts refined over a lifetime of thieving and sharpened through constant Grey Warden vigilance, and someone was definitely watching her now. She took off her ring again, spinning it along her knuckles in what she hoped would pass for nonchalance as she sized up the situation, her body tense and hand poised to grab her dagger.

“Did you nick that, then?”

Sigrun jumped at the voice that came from a completely different direction than she had been anticipating. She turned to see an elf—Thom’s friend, she thought—settled in the seat next to her as if she’d been there all along, grinning at her in a slightly unsettling fashion.

“Excuse me?” she asked, trying to recover some of her bruised dignity.

“Did you nick that ring?” the elf repeated. “You’re a thief, yeah? Been watching you play with it.”

Sigrun huffed an offended breath. “No, I did not. It belonged to my friend.”

“Hmm,” the elf said, pushing her messy hair out of her face and leaning closer to Sigrun, “it’s shiny. I like stuff that’s shiny, right? Or stuff that feels soft. Or weird. Or just… stuff, yeah? Stuff is nice. Got a collection.”

“A collection,” Sigrun echoed faintly, already feeling as though this conversation had somehow gotten away from her.

“Yeah, of stuff.”

“I… see.” It had taken her a while to work out how to talk to Velanna, but this elf seemed to have nothing in common with Sigrun’s friend and the measured, haughty proclamations Sigrun had come to think of fondly as ‘just her way’.

“Got it in a cabinet, right? The stuff. That’s like a cupboard, only fancy. Had to sort out Morris but he’s easy. Lizards,” the elf finished, with a look that Sigrun assumed was supposed to be significant, though whatever the significance could be was lost on her.

She took a deep breath and found a smile. Here was someone who was willing to look past the armour and the brand, even if it was an elf whose mouth ran faster than a nug on a feast day and made even less sense.

“You’re Thom’s friend, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m Sigrun.”

“Right, names, _then_ ‘small talk’, he said,” the elf muttered firmly, spitting out the words ‘small talk’ as if they tasted bad. She pulled a face briefly before grinning again. “Sera. That’s me. And yeah, we’re friends, me and him. Blackwall. Thingy.”

Sera’s grin was infectious, and Sigrun found herself grinning back. “Nice to meet you, Sera,” she said, leaning forward slightly on her barstool so she could… sod it. She might as well get it out of the way. “Let me ask you one thing. How do you feel about dead dwarves?”

Sera wrinkled her nose. “Dunno. Never felt any kind of dwarf,” she said, and the grin was definitely lascivious now. “Like the chance to try though.”

Sigrun laughed and raised her glass. That one was almost worthy of Oghren.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Dwarf Appreciation Week](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/dwarf-appreciation-week) on tumblr. You can follow me [here](http://originally.tumblr.com).


End file.
